Indiana Democratic Party responds to Governor's speech

“State of the State” address ignores state’s real problems

When he ran for office, Mitch Daniels told voters he would value education, create jobs and lower property taxes. One year later, we’ve seen failure on all three fronts.

In his speech tonight, the Governor again showed that he would rather pay lip-service to progress while glossing over tough issues like job loss, outsourcing and skyrocketing property taxes.

The Governor’s proposal to spend $156 million shoring up education funding may sound magnanimous, but in truth, he created the problem last year by signing a budget that flat-lined education spending across the state. Thousands of teachers lost their jobs, and school districts were left strapped for cash during the year.

In his speech, the Governor proposed a tax increase for the second year in a row, which again shows how out of touch he is with average Hoosiers and their expectations of government.

Indiana lost thousands of jobs last year, but the Governor believes the best way to improve our economy is to send billions of dollars in state contracts to non-Indiana companies and to champion low-paying jobs while corporate executives rake in large bonuses. Noticeably absent from his speech were the true statistics about the current state of Indiana’s economy under his leadership.

As we said after last year’s “State of the State” address, we remain hopeful that the political, partisan campaigning will end soon so that governing on behalf of all Hoosiers can begin.

As always, our legislative caucus remains committed to an agenda that benefits this state, and our lawmakers will continue to strive for bipartisan cooperation with the Governor.

For more information on the Democratic message, visit the Indiana Democratic Website.